Page 133 of Dawnlands

“D’you think you can find her?”

“Nay! Not I! I won’t see so much as her shadow unless she allows it. Nobody will ever find her. But I’ll go there, and make a bit of a noise, and she’ll come to me if she wants.”

“But she might already be with Johnnie. She might have been hiding on the plantation and be with him now. She might be safe, and his letter on the way.”

“I don’t know what there is between her and Johnnie,” Ned said steadily. “I’ve never even seen them together, and she’s never spoken of him to me. None of my business. If she comes out of hiding and goes to him… it doesn’t matter to me, Sister. I want her to please herself. In all fairness, I know that he loves her.”

“Like you?” Alinor asked.

“No! Never. He loves her as a man loves a woman, as a young man loves a young woman, and that’s good and right for him. But I love her as if she were a star in the sky. I love her as if she were the wind blowing over the water. I don’t need to own her, I just want her to be in the sky, moving over the deep, I just want her to shine.”

REEKIE WHARF, LONDON, SUMMER 1687

The carriage hired to take Matthew, Mia, and Gabrielle to the Priory brought Ned back to the warehouse on the return journey. Despite Alinor’s concern, he traveled alone and arrived on an unseasonably cold rainy day and climbed down the steps without help.

“Now here’s a grand sight,” Alys greeted him in the yard. “Look at you! Not a mark on you.”

He lifted the floppy graying fringe of hair to show her the white scar where the cannonball had struck his head. “Your ma has been basting me with arnica beeswax,” he said. “And lavender, and comfrey. I swear to you, I went to bed some nights as sweet as a pomander.”

Alys laughed. “Did she feed you nettle soup? She always fed me nettle soup if I had a fall.”

Ned smiled. “I’ve come here to escape the nettle soup. Don’t remind me of it. The stench! And that green color! And fish—I had fish for dinner every day. I am like to grow fins.”

Alys laughed and led him into the house. “Come and have some small ale after your journey—are you allowed small ale?”

They walked past the open kitchen door and Ned called a greeting to the cook, Tabs, and the maid, Susie. “I am allowed small ale, but no strong liquors,” he said. “I am allowed a glass of wine and water with my dinner. I pity those children, with her for the summer, she’s a tyrant.”

Cook came in with two glasses of small ale, and Alys sat at the parlor table and Ned at the empty hearth. “Jests aside, you are well, Uncle? You look better?”

“I am. I’m well enough to sail. I’ll take a passage to Barbados.”

Alys grimaced. “All that way on the off chance that she’s alive?”

“Gladly. I owe it to her.”

“Johnnie was very sure that she was dead.”

“That’s not a girl who gets lost in a forest.”

“Uncle Ned, I don’t want Johnnie stirred up about her all over again,” Alys told him bluntly. “He’s making a fortune there, he sent home two barrels of sugar.”

“Slavery money.”

“Profit. It’s all slavery. There’s no free labor in Barbados.”

“Alys, I wouldn’t distress you for the world, and I won’t trouble him. But it’s my duty to see she’s safe. I’ll go as soon as I can raise funds for a passage.”

“Half of London’s going out with the new governor for Jamaica—you could probably get on the frigate.”

“Who is it?”

“Christopher Monck, the treasure hunter.”

He gave a comical yelp of dismay. “Drunk Monck!” he exclaimed. “I last saw him drunk as a lord, in a little town in the west. Wouldn’t come over to our side, couldn’t lead his men. Good for nowt.”

“Did he see you?” Alys asked, immediately anxious. “Did he get your name?”

“Nay, he won’t remember me, he won’t remember anything. It wasn’t his finest hour. But I might get a place in his train.”